Special Rules for Nations

[ploesch]

I the 2E BRCS Atlas, many nations had special rules governig them. For Instance, Elinie requires all adult males to serve for 2 years, so their levies are considered irregulars. A definite advantage, with no drawbacks.

Now, this would be easily done, the lord Decrees it so, the law enforces it, done. But the rules governing this need to be clarified.

Does each Domain get one free effect? Landed Domains Only? Can only certain types of domains do certain actions?

The thing is, there is no cost associated with the advantage. I think we should put together a list of advantages and disadvantages, the requirements to make them happen, and effects. We can discuss it here, and hopefully get this added to the Sanctioned Chapter 5.

Use this for a template:
Name:
How:
Requirements:
Cost:
Effect:

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Name: Compulsory Service
How: Decree
Requirements: Landed Regents Only
Cost: Normal Decree costs; Must keep 1 Military Unit per 3 Province levels or 1/2GB for each unit they don't have.
Effect: The regent decrees that every able bodied Person/Male/Female must serve the Crown for a certain period of time. This service could be in Law holdings, Military or other service to the crown. If this is in effect, then barring units destroyed in war, the regent must keep, at all times, 1 unit of troops for each 3, or portion, province levels they rule. These troops can be Garrisoned as the regent sees fit. If the regent does not keep the required number of troops they must pay a maintenance cost of 1/2 GB for each unit they're supposed to have and don't, this represents the cost of paying people that are doing other work for the crown. So Regent A Rules 22 total levels of provinces, and therefore is supposed to keep 8 units, but only keeps 6, then the Regent must pay 1GB in addition to their other costs per turn to pay for the additional people helping at court, in the law holdings or wherever the regent has them servicing the crown. If units are destroyed in war, the regent must replace them the next season, or pay the additional cost. Realistically, it would take several years for this to be effective, and if the decree was ended it would be many years before it would no longer have an effect, but for the sake of the game and simplicity, the regent can make a second decree action and undo this decree, and lose all benefits and costs associated with it. These Levies need to be payed as any irregular unit, but are always considered garrisoned.

[ploesch]

Name: Adventurous Populace
How: See Below
Requirements: See Below
Cost: See Below
Effect: The Population of your realm is highly adventurous, and loyal. When drawing levies not only are the people willing, but because so many are/were adventurers, you gain an additional unit of Irregulars for each province. 2 units if the province is level 7, 3 if level 9 or greater. These additional units will serve loyaly as long as they are serving to defend the realm, if they are used in anything other than a retaliatory strike against an invading regent they will need to make a Morale check DC 15 or disband. These units need to be payed as any irregular unit, but are always considered garrisoned.

Gaining this Province Bonus is completely up to the Game Master. If any province falls below the loyalty rating of Friendly, they lose this bonus. As a Guideline, this bonus should only be given to domains that don't enforce harsh rules on it's citizens, and that don't impose unreasonable taxes on it's citizens or commit unreasonable seizures.

[ploesch]

Name: Fierce Loyalty
How: See Below
Requirements: See Below
Cost: See Below
Effect: The Population of your realm are highly loyal. When drawing levies not only are the people willing, but fiercely loyal. They gain a +4 on all morale checks as long as they are defending their home Realm.

Gaining this Province Bonus is completely up to the Game Master. If any province falls below the loyalty rating of Friendly, they lose this bonus. As a Guideline, this bonus should only be given to domains that don't enforce harsh rules on it's citizens, and that don't impose unreasonable taxes on it's citizens or commit unreasonable seizures. This type of realm bonus is common to Theocracy where the people are serving their God more than their government, but some particularly Charismatic figures can inspire this type of loyalty in their subjects.

[ploesch]

Name: Dead Certainty
How: See Below
Requirements: Evil land with powerful evil regent; Regent must directly or indirectly control the Guild Holdings of the land.
Cost: See Below
Effect: The people may not be the most loyal, but they KNOW that their regent is destined for great things, and won't tolerate those who would speak out against them. Anyone speaking out against the regent for more than one season will ace an assasination attempt one each season till they leave the province, die OR stop speaking against the regent.

Gaining this Province Bonus is completely up to the Game Master. This type of realm bonus is common to realms with a particularly Charismatic regent with powerful aspirations.

[ploesch]

Name: Defensive Perimeter
How: Build
Requirements: Regent or people with affinity for certain animals or Nature. (Elves, Awnshegh, and Regents with the animal affinity ability), a source of 2 per level must exist in any province to be effected.
Cost: 8GB per level, and decree action and cost.
Effect: The effect of this realm power is fairly simple. Provinces protected by it gain the below benefits. The idea is that through affinity with certai creatures, or with nature the regent can make the particular creatures or even the plants themselves inform the regent of the goings on in the affected provinces, or to even attack those trying to gain entry.

Level 1 - The regent knows the size and strength of anything entering the domain. +4 on warcraft checks to determine battlefields. The land has a creepy feel to it, all Diplomacy, Lie and other such skills suffer a -2 penalty when dealing with outsiders.
Level 2 - The regent can actually inhabit the totem creatures or nature to spy on anyone in the realm. They can also take more aggressive action while inhabiting the creatures body. +6 on warcraft checks to determine battlefield. The land has a creepy feel to it, all Diplomacy, Lie and other such skills suffer a -3 penalty when dealing with outsiders.
Level 3 - The land defends itself. Anyone not from the realm entering it will be beseiged by the land or totem animals. Military Units must make a morale check, DC 11, OR take 1 Hit and the normal morale check or break for home. Visitors get lost. Nearly all contact with the outside world is closed. Trade Routes to outside provinces are destroyed and no trade routes to outside the territory can be created.

The regent must Decree that no harm must come to the totem animal, or to the plants that protect the realm. If this decree is rescinded, then the protection immediately ends, and must be built up again.

[epicsoul]

Hmmm... gotta come up with the one Ghoere has too - an effect for mercs. I like these - will be going through all the books to see if I can contribute as well.

[Cuchulainshound]

Interesting mechanic that opens the door to customizing aspects of provinces currently only covered in narrative descriptions of source material.

How would you impliment this with Players? Allow them to choose any they want, or GM assignation? Either/both could work. But would this then potentially unbalance larger Realms vs smaller ones? Hmmm... perhaps each bonus should be balanced with a drawback, or a list of bonuses/drawbacks could be given, and any province could take one of each to balance?

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Name:Religious Fervor
How:
Requirements:Official Temple recognized by Province Regent
Cost: n/a
Effect: A single dominant religious belief binds the residents of this province to that sect, and any outside system is rejected out of hand. Rule (Temple) holding, and possibly Adventure Activities, suffer a penalty.

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Name:Living under Shadow
How:
Requirements: Anshweigh controlled Province
Cost: n/a
Effect: The residents (assuming there are surviving communitees), live under fear for their lives, and any outsiders are immediately reported to "the authorities". Espionage and Adventure actions in this province suffer penalties.

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Name: Magical Harmony
How:
Requirements: Province controlled by Source Regent
Cost: n/a
Effect: Accustomed by long years of living more harmoniously with the natural/magical aspects of the land, the residents resist any "over-development" of the province. Penalty to any Rule Holding efforts (other than Source holdings.)
__________________________________________________ ___

I could see some of these being abused, as they are "naturals" for certain Regents. They could start to look like Feats from Splatbooks, that just keep optimizing an already powerful aspect of a character (at a "penalty" to aspects that have long ago been abandoned.) Who wouldn't want a strong defensive bonus? Would need to be balanced out somehow.

[nagebenfro]

My university roleplay club tried doing this, bulding up a system of traits that kingdoms could buy with domain points at startup.

It was an absolute nightmare from a balance point of view, because working out relative costs opened up debates that would last over a month. It also hurt the roleplay aspect of coming up with a background, becasue everyone bought the aspects of their realm that would normally be fluff.

For example, if you can start with major defensive bonuses, perhaps another realm can start as a mercantile nation? That was the worse one to debate, becasue people wanted to collect slighly more income from holdings and trade routes, and in our experience, it is gold that is the most unbalancing factor in any birthright game.

[irdeggman]

My university roleplay club tried doing this, bulding up a system of traits that kingdoms could buy with domain points at startup.

It was an absolute nightmare from a balance point of view, because working out relative costs opened up debates that would last over a month. It also hurt the roleplay aspect of coming up with a background, becasue everyone bought the aspects of their realm that would normally be fluff.

For example, if you can start with major defensive bonuses, perhaps another realm can start as a mercantile nation? That was the worse one to debate, becasue people wanted to collect slighly more income from holdings and trade routes, and in our experience, it is gold that is the most unbalancing factor in any birthright game.

Yeah that is my initial reaction too.

While it is at least a good discussion topic it might prove to be too weildy to try to insert into the "rules".

Maybe a variant or sidebar with some examples of how to create some that could be used might be more palatable.

Anyway it is too earler to eliminate the "potential" of this discussion though.

[cutenfluffy]

These bonuses are all meant to represent not something that the ruler does or choses, but are a reflection of the people living in the domain. Rulers can and frequently do alter the lifestyle of their people, but this would be a slow thing.

I don't think these bonuses should be able to be changed easily. Requirements for a bonus should require significant effort on the part a regent, potentially multiplie decree, domain or court actions over several domain turns.

So I think requirements need to be a bit more definitive.

[ploesch]

I definetely agree some type of disadvantage should be used to balance them. I was trying to take them out of the 2E atlas, then work out the actual advantage and disadvantage, and not just flavor text.

You'll notice that in most of my write-ups there are certain disadvantages that limit what actions a regent can take. It may be something as mnor as not making seizures, or increasing taxes above base level, but many of them have to do with the Loyalty level of the people, and we all know how quickly that can be destroyed.

I also agree that in reality most of these advantages would take years to put into place (and years to go away if the regent tried), but for game purposes, that is impractical.

Perhaps these advantages can only be bought (except as noted) when creating/taking over a realm. I just think it would be cool to have an actual effect from the flavor text.

[ploesch]

These bonuses are all meant to represent not something that the ruler does or choses, but are a reflection of the people living in the domain. Rulers can and frequently do alter the lifestyle of their people, but this would be a slow thing.....

Yeas and No. Certain bonuses more represent the attitude of the people.

However, the Boders of the sielwode Protecting itself, OR the people of aerenwe or Elinie being required to serve the crown upon reaching majority, OR the spider knowing when travelors come into the realm trough an affinity with spiders are all strong examples of how these bonuses may not reflect the will or desire of the people.

[ThatSeanGuy]

I was trying to take them out of the 2E atlas, then work out the actual advantage and disadvantage, and not just flavor text.

What is this Atlas you're mentioning? I don't see anything like it in the origional Atlas of Cerilia, so I'm assuming its a web supplament or something...

[Cuchulainshound]

Perhaps these advantages can only be bought (except as noted) when creating/taking over a realm...
I would think exactly the opposite, and for the reasons you yourself mentioned...


I also agree that in reality most of these advantages would take years to put into place (and years to go away if the regent tried)...
If the realistic effect is "impractical", do we then throw any attempt to stay true to believability in favour of "really cool" rules? I hope not.

I'd say that, if anything, such "social inertia" would be placed at the beginning of the game, as part of the traditional character of the existing population. And, if a Regent, new or ongoing, wanted to change that, it would, indeed, be a long-term project (probably best done via Agitate actions, as stands), if it could be done at all.

It would be something like Attitude, but less volatile, less easily swayed. Maybe rolls made/year- but that might open the door for "year long" actions- which might not be an entirely bad concept. Some goals are not something you can achieve in a month or a season. But this would definitely be one of them.

[cvgawde]

Each effect should come with a bonus and a penalty for a net effect of zero, this would be helpful since as described in the books most of the domains don't have any real special fluff.

Such aspects as...

Mercantile nation - bonus to gold income that guild holdings gain in trade routes, penalty to defend against espionage and enemies attempting espionage gain a bonus. This reflects the open-borders that often accompany a heavy trading populace.

Trained levies - Levies are considered irregulars but they can only defend and if deployed for more than one domain turn the loyalty of all provinces drop by one level for each turn they remain deployed. With the hard training of the people, they expect victory quickly.

Such things as that i suppose ould be used to balance out the bonuses. The key is to have a net effect of zero, to focus on one aspect of a domain invites greater ineptitude in other areas. To remain a well-rounded nation you simply take none of these traits.

I've never much bought into the idea of "jack of all trades, master of one."